


walking on a string

by arbitrarily



Category: The Great (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Content, Canon-Typical Historical Anachronisms, Consensual Infidelity, F/M, Implied/Referenced Background Relationships, Manipulation, Multi, Scheming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27559753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: Assassination, revisited.
Relationships: Catherine/Grigor Dymov, Catherine/Peter III (The Great TV 2020)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 77
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	walking on a string

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LearnedFoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnedFoot/gifts).



> This is set around the time of the end of the war with Sweden, but diverges from canon before Peter starts torturing the entire court. So, more or less set/diverging from canon somewhere between episodes eight and nine of the series.
> 
> I had so much fun working with your amazing prompts and your letter. I hope you enjoy, and that you have a very happy Yuletide and holiday season!

_“[Peter the Great] kept it quiet. He used to hide friendships, so people would be led the wrong way.”  
_ _“That’s actually very clever.”_

“Love Hurts,” THE GREAT

_“As it turns out, I’m capable of much unpleasantness.”_

THE FAVOURITE

“Marial. If you were to kill a man, how might you go about it?”

“Quickly,” she says, both the speed of her response and her tone reflecting her statement. She cocks her head to the side, considering. “Painfully,” she adds.

Catherine’s fingers trace the edge of the tub. The water has begun to cool. “I might’ve thought you’d go in for a long and leisurely suffering before,” Catherine gestures at her own throat, crosses her eyes then sticks out her tongue.

“I have a greater abiding interest in not getting caught.” She reaches for Catherine’s robe. “Consider myself unaware as to the degree of fantasy we bandy about as we engage in your latest preoccupation: plotting your husband’s untimely death.”

“It does keep me busy.”

Marial flicks the robe at her. Their roles are too often reversed, Marial issuing wordless commands that Catherine is quick to follow. “If imprisonment and execution are of unlikely consequence, then more creative I shall get.”

Catherine levers herself up, water sluicing off her body, leaving her immediately chilled. “Hypothetical murder.” She steps out of the tub and Marial wraps her in her robe. Catherine looks over her shoulder at her maid. “Though not getting caught is of vital interest for me.”

Marial briefly rubs at Catherine’s upper arms. She steps away to the bed where Catherine’s day dress and accoutrements are laid out. Marial crosses her arms over her chest. She lifts her head.

“A knife, I should think,” she says. “There is something decidedly appealing about it. Penetrative. All that blood.”

Catherine will take it under advisement.

It starts, as most things do in Peter’s court, with an orgy.

The term orgy is up for debate, as there are only four participants, and only two of them particularly eager. Catherine sits reclined on the chaise, dressed only in a loose robe, mostly open in the front. She has a volume lent to her by Orlo in her hands, her attention fixed on it rather than what is earning Lady Dymov’s high-pitched wailing on the bed before her. Beside her, Grigor is mostly naked. Sullen, pouting. Half-mast.

She catches sight of him out of the corner of her eye, reaching for her, slow and tentative—two features that have no place in either Peter’s court or boudoir. She slaps his hand before he can find the space between her legs. Without looking up, she turns the page.

“Your husband wishes I…give you pleasure,” he hisses.

Catherine finally lifts her head, momentarily distracted by the acrobatic feat achieved by the husband in question and Grigor’s wife. Her legs are splayed in such a way it makes Catherine’s own thigh muscles twinge in sympathy. She turns to Grigor. Nothing about the expression on his face is lusty or debauched or anything at all like Peter’s. Instead, he looks gravely determined, as if enduring Peter’s poor sportsmanship after a fruitless hunting outing or proceeding along with a death march back from the front lines or engineering a coup in secret. It is relatable, being her point.

Earlier that day, Peter had pointed out that particular grimness. Over breakfast, he had said, “Grigor has been of sour spirit lately.”

“Hmmm,” Catherine had hummed. She was not interested. She was thinking of the following things: Leo’s face and how she missed it; Queen Agnes of Sweden; the Voltaire she had read that morning before dressing; Leo’s tongue (and how she missed it); poking Archie’s eyes out with the tines of her fork; her beloved Russia; revolution; slitting Peter’s throat with a carving knife; and what exactly it was in those sweet custard tarts the kitchen made under the new chef.

Across the table, Peter pointed at her. “I’d have you fuck him. Bring him but an ounce of joy.”

“Hmmm,” Catherine said again. Perhaps if she might have listened or paid a bit of attention, her current setting would not strike her as such a miserable surprise. She should know better to take Peter at his word.

“Yes, but his wife declines,” she snaps now.

“He’ll get cross with me.”

“But he’ll have your wife to assuage his rage.” Grigor glares, color high on his cheeks. She leans in closer to him, her voice pitched quiet. “You’d only lay with me to please Peter. I am not interested in adding to his pleasure more than I am already required. Besides. He appears to be receiving more than enough.”

Something interesting and unexpected passes over Grigor’s face, canny and sharp. “I would only fuck you to hurt him.”

Catherine sits up a little straighter, both her book and her libidinous husband briefly forgotten. For the first time since meeting him, Catherine spies a glimmer of potential she did not expect to find.

Or, no. Not the orgy. Before. It starts when Catherine spends a night waiting for Leo to join her. He does not.

The following morning, she sits at Peter’s table for breakfast.

“Have you seen Leo?” she finally says aloud, asked as carefully casual as she can manage. Gory, god-awful images flash through her mind. Leo without a head. Leo shot through the heart and left to die out in a forest somewhere. Leo, in a barrel of eels.

“Oh, yes. I took him back.”

“Took him,” she swallows, “back?”

“Yes. Did I stutter? I ask you genuinely. Mother always did hate that about me.” A nearly unendurable pause extends as he swills vodka with black pepper. “I took him back. Your continued interest perked my own, and my cock as well. I decided to see to it.”

“And?”

“And. I saw to it. And him. His cock is even more impressive in action than I thought possible for one man to achieve. My arse begged to differ.”

“You fucked him.”

“Rather, and I am not ashamed to say, he fucked me. And I quite liked it.” He pops a fig in his mouth. “I think I’ll keep him.”

Catherine cracks her egg with the back of her spoon.

Later that day, Catherine walks past Peter’s mother’s desiccated, albeit well-dressed, corpse. She raises her middle finger. “Fuck you,” she says without breaking stride.

Without Leo, Catherine spends most of her nights alone. Or, with Marial.

She flops down onto her bed. She winces as the corset bites into her flesh at an off angle. She adjusts, fidgets. Kicks off her shoes. She takes several deep breaths as she lays there. She can hear Marial’s arrival, as she works through the room.

“Empress.”

Catherine says nothing. Her mood since Peter absconded with Leo has been largely moody, as if laboring under a dark cloud. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, she has thought often of Grigor as he had been in Peter’s bed chamber. Resentment was there, like a ripe berry to be plucked and eaten.

“What do you think of Grigor?”

“Dymov?” Surprise is evident in Marial’s tone. “I cannot say I have ever given him much thought. He’s perfectly dull as courtiers go, neither imaginative nor all that clever. He _is_ a survivor, however. So, y’know.”

Catherine doesn’t know, not really. She likes to think she’s learning.

“Would he be of use to us? To the coup?”

Marial places a hand on her hip, her expression dubious. “He has never been of any use to anyone to my knowledge, but far be it from me for him to try to change his ways.”

A party, the usual vodka, champagne, oysters. Knife-play and assault. The only person who looks half as miserable as she feels is Grigor. He has let a beard begin to grow in, and she feels what could develop into kinship with this not-so-minor act of rebellion in the court of Peter the Jackass.

It is in that spirit she attempts to make conversation with him.

“Have you read much Tacitus?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. That guy. All killer no filler,” he says, clearly distracted. His attention is fixed across the room. As if he must physically drag his eyes away, he reluctantly turns to Catherine. “Is he a friend of yours?”

She ignores him. Her gaze follows the path his vacated, to where Grigor’s own was drawn. Peter, Georgina. Typical.

“He took my lover,” she hears herself say. She has yet to find a sympathetic ear amidst her usual coterie. All Marial had done was roll her eyes and bundle up the laundry, muttering something under her breath about either ungratefulness or undergarments. Orlo had leapt immediately to doom and gloom, believing this move rose to the level of counterinsurgency against their efforts.

Aunt Elizabeth said, “oh no. The poor thing. Is he dead?”

She has found it now; she knows it. Grigor’s mouth tips up in a rueful, closed-mouth grin and he nods in her general direction. “I know the feeling well, Empress. I would love to offer the condolence that it gets easier, but. Well.” He throws back his champagne. “Huzzah.”

She finds him again, in the small hours, after the party has died down into either fisticuffs or fucking. He has retired in the anteroom to Peter’s chambers. The door is open and the howling noises of animal mating can be heard from within. Grigor sits on the floor, his legs thrown out in front of him, his posture slumped, as if a puppet with his strings cut. He is well-sauced and if Catherine has taught herself to be good at anything it is this: recognizing an opportunity, and taking it. Anything can be an opportunity, if you’re willing to make it one.

Catherine crouches down beside him. She makes what she thinks passes as a lovely and sympathetic face. Unfortunately, he is not looking at her. He is staring blankly ahead, at an empty wall. Along the molded baseboard rests a collection of broken glass.

“Hello, Grigor. Are you very sad?” That sounds lovely and sympathetic enough.

He nods his head as if he has heard her, but when he speaks, it’s as if he is continuing a conversation he started long before she entered. “He takes and he takes and he takes, and you know fucking what? He never gives anything back.” Grigor pauses, a considering look shadowing his face. “Well, except for when he does, and then you can’t help but love the old sod that much more, and it’s a terribly complicated thing, you know, loving and hating someone in equal measure. Don’t you think?”

“You still love him?”

Grigor frowns, genuinely confused. His entire body has gone horizontal save for his head. He can barely hold it up to sip more from his glass, like a baby bird tossed from the nest. “Of course I do. He’s…” he waves his hand, as if casting about for a proper description of what, precisely, her husband is. “He’s Peter.”

Catherine says nothing. She thought he would say it is because he is Emperor. Grigor tosses his empty glass against the wall. It shatters.

“I have news.”

Catherine lays flat on her back, her head hanging over the edge of the mattress. The blood rushes nearly pleasantly in her ears. She looks, upside-down, at Marial.

“Tell me.”

“I have been doing a little light digging, Empress. Into your husband’s recent situation.”

“His poisoning, you mean.”

“The very one. And I believe I have ascertained the identity of the culprit.”

“No!” Catherine launches upright, onto her elbows, in excitement. “Who is it? Tell me, immediately.”

Marial’s mouth curls, clearly relishing every moment of suspense she creates. “Brace yourself, and gird your loins,” she says, and then she tells her.

“Hello, Grigor.”

Another evening, another event commemorating some dead Russians. She is meant to care, but Peter makes it hard. At times, she questions whether the opposition that beats so persistently in her heart is not just a more charitable interpretation of petty contrarianism. But then, no; she thinks of Russia, of what it can be, and she knows her cause is just. She believes herself to be better than any of that.

Grigor salutes her with his sweating goblet. “Empress.”

“A fine evening, I should say. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure, of course. Yup. R.I.P. to those dead fucks, and all that.”

“Huzzah! And the cup you drink from there, that looks very fine as well, I presume.”

She went over this again and again over the remaining course of the day following Marial’s disclosure. “He’s Peter’s best friend,” Marial said. “And he’s neither lightweight nor acclaimed genius. He’s entirely average, which unfortunately for us, makes for a narrow needle to thread.”

“How so?”

“He’s boring. It’s hard to plot how best to take advantage of the dull.” She paused. “I’d threaten him, I was you. Show just enough of your hand. Let him think he knows all that you know and let him wallow in his own misery as to just how far you’d be willing to play it against him.”

Now, she leans forward, her mouth at Grigor’s ear. “Not a trace of arsenic, not in your cup.”

She watches the color drain from his face. She holds nothing truly against him, beyond what she holds against any courtier who entertains Peter’s worst impulses while caring so little for the soul of their nation, but there is something deliciously satisfying in having one’s power over another made so abundantly clear and tangible.

Grigor’s gulps, nearly choking. He says something that sounds like, “Bwhaa?”

“I think you and I should chat. Don’t you?”

“Poisoned borscht. Points for creativity, at the least,” Marial said, an hour earlier. “Though they do say poison is a woman’s weapon, so. Points deducted for that one. And, well. The cunt survived.”

Catherine narrowed her eyes, slumped low on the chaise, her arms crossed over her chest. Thinking. She was meant to be getting dressed. “He sat there, and he watched him eat it. And then he played handball with him,” she mused. She lifted her head. “That takes a strength of character I uncharitably denied him.”

“So, what now? We induct him into the club, teach him the secret handshake, fuck him into submission, hand him a dagger and foist him off to finish what he started?”

Catherine had not replied. She was still thinking. The plan—that was what she was crafting. Through Grigor, she could begin to peel the court away from Peter, install their support behind her instead. Grigor would make a most advantageous start. Georgina, certainly an issue, though not necessarily insurmountable. What was it Machiavelli had said? A ruler should endeavor to divide the forces of the enemy. Divide and conquer—that was precisely what she planned to do.

“I have a plot. Will I have to kill you were I to share it with you?”

Catherine led Grigor off to a side room, full of dusty tomes long untouched and unread. If anyone saw them depart the party together, they would most like assume nothing more than a furtive assignation. Better, she supposes, than assuming she fucks horses.

She watches in the low light as Grigor’s throat bobs. It’s not entirely unattractive. There is something to be said for a nervous man who wears it obvious and well. Even more to be said of a nervous man willing to kill her husband.

“God, I hope not.”

Catherine has given this much thought in the hours granted to her, her strategy to win his support. She saw what her changes at court had done for him—they brought Georgina back to him. With Peter distracted, with Peter out of the picture, Grigor could have what he always wanted: his wife as his and only his. She says as much to him.

“Wouldn’t you like that all the time?” she says, slowly, syrupy and openly cunning. “An easier life, a simpler one. The way things ought to be?”

Grigor wags a finger towards her. “I see what you’re doing. You—you’re trying to play me. Woo me to do your bidding. You’re not very good at it. You should have gone with threats. A man always responds to threats.”

“I am trying to appeal to a rational mind who sees what I can see. Should I have pursued your Lady Dymov instead? Is she the brains of this particular outfit?”

Grigor ignores that crack. “So, what? Tell me. What’s the bright idea? The grand plan? We axe Peter, install you as Empress? Long live Russia, huzzah and happy days?”

He makes it sound silly, phrased like that. “Something like that.”

“How do you know I won’t run to Peter, right now, and tell him everything?”

“Because you know I will tell him about your sudden inclination towards the culinary arts. You move, and so do I. You and I, we are two horses now who ride together.” She groans inwardly; again with the horses.

Grigor goes very still, his hands set on his hips, his body stooped over, which she thinks means that he is thinking. His face has taken on the look of the condemned man who has felt the first rough brush of the hangman’s noose about his neck. He takes a deep breath and then rights his posture.

“I can see, already, a fucking myriad of flaws in this scheme of yours, but let us focus first on my primary concern: what of our status at court?”

“Well, Grigor, you are very lucky. Now is your opportunity to maintain it. You help me, I help you. That’s how this works. _Quid pro quo_.” She pronounces each syllable with pride. “And on the bright side, I have no intention of fucking your wife’s brains out. That is, unless, you wish to join us.” She tries to bat her eyelashes.

Grigor grimaces. “Your attempts at seduction are disconcerting, to say the fucking least.”

She drops the coquetry like a hot potato. She should have learned that is not her hand to play, especially after that disaster with Orlo and the oysters. She has minimal to no skill at the art of seduction. “Oh, fine. But you take my meaning. Your status will remain unchanged. I will keep you within my inner circle, and I demand only two things.”

“You say my cock and my wife’s cunt, and I am—”

“Your cooperation. And your confidentiality.”

“I don’t keep things from George.”

“Start.” A pause stretches and she struggles hard not to let her own nerves enter. She will not accept no for an answer. She cannot. “And shave your face before you draw more attention to yourself.”

He ignores that, too. A nearly clever cast slants down over his features. “You know, I heard about your miserable little performance, while Peter was ill.”

“Poisoned,” she corrects, a pointed lift of an eyebrow. He glowers.

Catherine takes a step forward. She takes in Grigor’s face; so sharp, the utter opposite of Peter’s fallen cherub baby-cheeked roundness.

“You fucked up, and so did I. But next time? We get it right. This time? You’ll kill him.”

Grigor finally proves his potential for intelligence: he agrees.

The next morning, she breakfasts with Peter.

“It is a fine morning, wife. And I find myself alight with a wellspring of generosity. I must credit Leo for this fine mood; he does have the most prodigious cock.” Peter takes a bite off his plate and continues to speak. “Did you know, there is a place inside a man’s arsehole that results in a pleasure impossible to speak to? Perhaps I will try.” Peter makes a noise that sounds much like a pig being slaughtered and more than enjoying the prospect of butchery.

“How very lovely for you.” Catherine’s teeth are clenched so tight she worries they might crack.

“It is in that spirit of generosity that I am willing to consider giving something of my own, to you. Aunt Elizabeth says that’s what love is, isn’t that special?”

Catherine’s jaw stiffens further and when she grins it is merely a baring of her teeth, like a trapped animal. She lacks the time or the patience for him to try to fuck an heir into her this morning. She is tired of the stink and sting of lemons. “I need for nothing, husband.”

“Grigor.”

Her heart skips a beat before it begins to hammer. He knows. No, he doesn’t know. He can’t know. “I beg your pardon?” she squeaks.

“I saw the two of you, gabbing away last night. I think it’s grand you are finally making friends here at court, wife. And in the spirit of the generosity gifted to me by the pleasure from your former lover’s cock, I grant you leave.”

“Leave?”

“Yes, leave. Am I not speaking plainly enough? To fuck him. Grigor, of course.”

The swoop of relief beneath her corset is nearly enough to leave her light-headed. “That is not at all necessary.”

Peter frowns. “You do not care for him?”

“He is perfectly,” she finds herself at an uncharacteristic loss for words. Adjectives, namely. “Angular.”

“He is, and I love him for it.” Peter grins. “It’s settled, then. I’d have you love him, too.”

“Do you think he knows?” Catherine, arms akimbo, stalks about her room at a rapid pace. “Is that what this is about?”

“If he knew, my balls would be a paste on his fine parquet floors and Archie would be unspooling my intestines.” Grigor sets his empty glass down. His hands rest at his belt. “This, actually, qualifies as his idea of a kindness.”

“Well, fine. Alright. It’s an easy enough charade for the both of us to maintain, lovers at the urging of my husband, the Emperor. It gives us time, an excuse, for the both of us to cloister ourselves alone and together. Actually,” she lifts a finger, “it could be a stroke of brilliance. A perfect misdirection, suspicion diverted in the belief of a love affair. I—what the hell are you doing?”

She freezes, as her pacing brings her back around to face him. Grigor has begun to take off his trousers.

“Am I or am I not supposed to fuck you? Forgive me, for I am confused.”

“Get dressed. Sit.” He does both without complaint. It provides a great insight into just how pliable Grigor can be. She thinks back on what Marial has had to say of him, of what Catherine herself has witnessed firsthand. It tells a greater story: just how willing Grigor is to do what he must to continue on in court as Peter’s closest friend.

Catherine takes a seat in the chair opposite him. She lays out the bare bones of her plan, or at least the plan as it applies to Grigor. He need not concern himself with matters of the military or the church—his concern is Peter’s court. Peter’s court, and turning their affections and allegiance to her.

“You understand, don’t you, how futile this entire endeavor will prove to be? They won’t abandon Peter. Not for you.”

“They will. They just don’t know they can yet.”

“Christ.” Grigor sighs heavily. “Who else do you have in on this suicide run?”

Catherine brushes her fingers down a wrinkle in her skirt. While Marial knows of Grigor’s involvement, for a time, her plan is to keep him sequestered from the other plotters, and them from him.

She lifts her head and smiles gently. “I would like to be able to trust you before I go showing the cards I carry in my hand.”

He snorts. “You most like have more up your sleeve than in your hand.” She tries to look at him, doe-eyed and soft. He shakes his head.

“Doesn’t work. Ask George—I’ve never once responded to docile overtures in all my life.”

Catherine crosses her arms over her chest and settles back in her chair. “Fine. Tell me what I should know about Peter.”

“Peter. Where to fucking begin?” Grigor picks up a plum off the plate of fruit set before them. He considers it, puts it back down. “How’s about this, for a start: do not underestimate him. He may well act it at times, but if you assume Peter is a fool then it will be you who will act as one. He isn’t stupid. He’s a lot of things, but not that.”

She offers an, "Mm-hm," as her own reluctant agreement. “Despite all his bad qualities, and there are many, he makes it curiously difficult to kill him,” Catherine says. It is more akin to a confession, and that makes it both dangerous and delicious. “When you had him laid up, sick and not-quite-dying, I saw for myself a window there. And you know what? I found I could not do it.”

“That’s the funny thing,” Grigor says. "I found I could.”

The problem with Peter’s court—or, well, one of a great many—is that there are eyes and ears everywhere.

Following a perfectly tolerable banquet and a riot of shattered glass, Georgina corners her in an alcove. In the room to their left, the party continues to rage; to their right, the servants sweep up the detritus left in their wake.

“Lady Dymov,” Catherine says, as pleasant as a rosebush replete with thorns. “I hope your dinner was to your satisfaction.”

“Don’t,” she hisses. The bank of lit candelabras at her back have redrawn her face, limned each line of anger with dark shadow. She looks now like what she actually is: a clawing creature of survival. She is, and will be, vicious. She proves exactly that.

“I do not know what your game is with my husband, but trust, if you hurt him, I will fly at you with a rage you shall be hard put to contain.”

Catherine smiles sweetly. She must maintain appearances. She must thwart any potential suspicion.

“You forget to whom you speak, Lady Dymov.” She leans in that much closer. “Did you think it was only my husband who could take what he wants? For I have an appetite, too. And it is in your best interest to see that I continue to be well-fed.” She cocks her head and pulls back from her. “Have a lovely evening!"

Breakfast with Peter passes in silence, until, woefully, it does not.

“I asked Grigor about you.”

“Yes?”

“Poor boy was speechless. Didn’t know what to say. Kudos to you, wife. You’ve left him positively cuntstruck.”

Her spoon scrapes over the porcelain of her bowl. “Huzzah?”

“I am glad you have finally taken my advice,” Marial says. She readies Catherine for bed. “I truly am filled to the brim with the wisest counsel. Murder has long been your neatest way forward.”

Catherine shoots a censorious look over her shoulder. Marial shrugs. She resumes untying the laces of Catherine’s corset.

“You wish to rule Russia, Empress, not a fucking garden club. You’ll have to walk over a fair few corpses to climb that high.” She leans in closer, her mouth at Catherine’s ear. “Chop off Peter’s head and stand comfortably upon his shoulders. You will be amazed by the heights you can reach.”

Time passes in as comfortable a progression as it might when treason is the order of the day and discovery and subsequent execution might be hiding behind any door. Catherine comes to find Grigor’s company easy enough to abide, that is, when he is not restless. Too many questions though, all relating to the mechanism of the coup. Who is party to it, when will they spring the trap, does he truly need be the one to murder his closest friend and beloved Emperor—that sort of thing. One afternoon, she parries her own back at him.

“Have you ever killed before?”

“Your small talk is miserable, Empress.” He sighs. “I’m Russian. Of course I have. It’s a messy business.”

She fixes him with a long look. If he can kill, then she certainly could as well. “What was it like?”

Grigor looks to her as if she is speaking in riddles or code. “It was necessary. Practical.” He frowns. “Which time are we talking about?”

Her eyebrow lifts of its own volition. “You’ve committed murder more than once?”

The question goes unanswered. “Worst of it’s the blood—under my fingernails for fucking days.”

“Do you think of Peter’s blood? Under your nails?”

His gaze meets hers. It has gone briefly dark, very much unlike himself, before he turns away. He steps over to the small table, set with drinks. “Yes. Often.”

“How do you see yourself killing him? Has it always been poison?”

Grigor blanches at her. He looks at her dumbly, as if she struck him about the head rather than merely asked him two entirely loaded questions. He reacts like that every single time she mentions what he had done. What he tried to do. She cannot determine if it is distrust or shame, if the difference matters. He at last shrugs. Rather than pouring from the bottle of vodka into his empty glass, he sets both down.

“In truth, there has never been just the one way. Arsenic was, well, a product more of opportunity than strategy.”

“Shocking.” Catherine takes to her feet and takes a step forward towards him, then another.

“I always thought, y’know, if I were ever to have the stones and do the deed, as it were, it’d be a godawful bloody affair. An argument gone too hot, a brief shining moment when I allowed myself to see him for what he really was and I did what had to be done.”

Catherine has arrived at his side. She has no plan, but she finds herself drawn to what he says. Someone else, as close as she has been to Peter, who can see him. Who wishes to destroy him. Grigor glances over to her. He is near enough the side of his arm brushes against the bodice of her gown.

“Other times,” he chuckles. “I used to fantasize about taking one of George’s stockings and using it, about the throat, while he fucked her.”

That actually is somewhat shocking. It makes something flutter within her chest. Catherine moves her face in what she hopes conveys respect. “I think I would have liked to see that.”

“Oh, I am sure you would have, Empress.” He frowns now. He has shaved, but there is still something of the disheveled to him. His hair is tousled and messy and his eyes are lined and tired. The same lines are about his mouth as if his recent perpetual frown has worn irrevocable grooves into his face. And there is always that occasional sharpness to him, where she can recognize him as much as weapon as she does pawn.

“You think you are very different,” he says, each word slow and nearly careful.

“Different from whom?”

“You have it in you to be as vicious, as hot-blooded and cruel as he is.” He does not need to specify who he means; they both know.

“I am not like him at all.”

“Not yet.”

His mouth is right there, thin and oddly appealing. She imagines sinking her teeth into his flesh, pulling, and then she does exactly that. He groans helplessly. He cups her face and lets her take.

Grigor does not fuck like Leo. He does not fuck like Peter either. Catherine abandons comparing the three as he drives a spike of pleasure through her and she gasps with it.

After, she lays on her back, breathing heavily beside him on her unmade bed. “It is curious,” she says, “to fuck someone and feel no emotion about the act.”

“Sport-fucking. Peter’s made an art of it.”

“Hmmm. He may not be completely off-base in this pursuit. It is rather satisfying.”

Grigor snorts, amused, she presumes. “You’re not at all what I expected. I must tell you. Between the fucking and the plotting and the, the, all the rest of it—who the hell are you? Where did you come from.” The last does not sound a question, but something far more personally existential. Before Catherine can say anything, he continues to speak.

“I remember the first time that I saw you. Tired and ragged from your journey, stinking of carriage—”

“Is this meant to be a tale to secure my affection? Because I will warn you, you’re doing quite poorly.”

“—Peter was already playing his games with you,” he continues, his voice soft and fit for a far fairer story. “Your face was flushed and pink and it was as if the slightest breeze would be enough to bring you to your knees.” He pauses. His chest rises and falls as he breathes and, curiously, it is this uniform act of humanity that stirs a twinge of something deep within her.

Grigor rolls his head, his face turned towards her. She is still flushed and pink, but of a far different variety.

“Look at you now,” he says.

Peter arranges yet another bacchanal. Which is to say, he takes the three of them to his bed again.

Grigor’s gaze is fixed as always on his wife, where her body joins with Peter’s. Catherine presses a cool hand to the side of his neck. His pulse is galloping, and often now she feels the same. They are galloping forward, together. Unstoppable. A new Russia—she can nearly taste it.

With that in mind, she sighs softly. Her weight rests against Grigor’s arm. His hand grips the bow of her hip.

“Soon,” she whispers in his ear.

**Author's Note:**

> In my poking around at various historical sources while writing this, Tacitus was listed as one of the writers Catherine read and that it was his work specifically that caused a "revolution" in her. I then could not resist directly referencing Greg from _Succession_ 's [similar lack of Tacitus-based knowledge](https://georgezr.tumblr.com/post/637415414649995264) as Grigor. Apologies to Jesse Armstrong and probably also Tacitus.


End file.
